Verner's Pride eBook

A pause. But for Lionel’s admirable disposition,
how terribly he might have retorted upon her, knowing
what he had learned that day.

“Did he tell you I had completed the roguery
by pushing her into the pond?” he inquired.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.
Perhaps he did.”

“And—­doubting it—­you could
marry me!” quietly remarked Lionel.

She made no answer.

“Let me set you right on that point once for
all, then,” he continued. “I was
innocent as you. I had nothing to do with it.
Rachel and her father were held in too great respect
by my uncle—­nay, by me, I may add—­for
me to offer her anything but respect. You
were misinformed, Sibylla.”

She laughed scornfully. “It is easy to
say so.”

“As it was for Frederick Massingbird to say
to you what he did.”

“If it came to the choice,” she retorted,
“I’d rather believe him than you.”

Bitter aggravation lay in her tone, bitter aggravation
in her gesture. Was Lionel tempted to forget
himself?—­to set her right? If so, he
beat the temptation down. All men would not have
been so forbearing.

“Sibylla, I have told you truth,” he simply
said.

“Which is as much as to say that Fred told——­”
she was vehemently beginning when the words were stopped
by the entrance of John Massingbird. John, caught
in the shower near Deerham Court, made no scruple
of running to it for shelter, and was in time to witness
Sibylla’s angry tones and inflamed face.

What precisely happened Lionel could never afterwards
recall. He remembered John’s free and easy
salutation, “What’s the row?”—­he
remembered Sibylla’s torrent of words in answer.
As little given to reticence or delicacy in the presence
of her cousin, as she had been in that of Lucy Tempest,
she renewed her accusation of her husband with regard
to Rachel: she called on him—­John—­to
bear testimony that Fred was truthful. And Lionel
remembered little more until he saw Sibylla lying
back gasping, the blood pouring from her mouth.

John Massingbird—­perhaps in his eagerness
to contradict her as much as in his regard to make
known the truth—­had answered her all too
effectually before Lionel could stop him. Words
that burned into the brain of Sibylla Verner, and
turned the current of her life’s pulses.

It was her husband of that voyage, Frederick Massingbird,
who had brought the evil upon Rachel, who had been
with her by the pond that night.

As the words left John Massingbird’s lips, she
rose up, and stood staring at him. Presently
she essayed to speak, but not a sound issued from
her drawn lips. Whether passion impeded her utterance,
or startled dismay, or whether it may have been any
physical impediment, it was evident that she could
not get the words out.

Fighting her hands on the empty air, fighting for
breath or for speech, so she remained for a passing
space; and then the blood began to trickle from her
mouth. The excitement had caused her to burst
a blood-vessel.